Remote code execution vulnerability | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A critical vulnerability has been discovered in the widely used Transmission BitTorrent app that could allow hackers to remotely execute malicious code on BitTorrent users' computers and take control of them. The vulnerability has been uncovered by Google's Project Zero vulnerability reporting team, and one of its researchers Tavis Ormandy has also posted a proof-of-concept attack—just 40 days after the initial report. Usually, Project Zero team discloses vulnerabilities either after 90 days of reporting them to the affected vendors or until the vendor has released a patch. However, in this case, the Project Zero researchers disclosed the vulnerability 50 days prior to the actual time limit because Transmission developers failed to apply a ready-made patch provided by the researchers over a month ago. "I'm finding it frustrating that the transmission developers are not responding on their private security list, I suggested moving this into the open so that ...

Security researchers have discovered not one or two, but a total of seven security vulnerabilities in the popular open source Dnsmasq network services software, three of which could allow remote code execution on a vulnerable system and hijack it. Dnsmasq is a widely used lightweight network application tool designed to provide DNS (Domain Name System) forwarder, DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server, router ads and network boot services for small networks. Dnsmasq comes pre-installed on various devices and operating systems, including Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and Debian, home routers, smartphones and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. A shodan scan for "Dnsmasq" reveals around 1.1 million instances worldwide. Recently, Google's security team reviewed Dnsmasq and discovered seven security issues, including DNS-related remote code execution, information disclosure, and denial-of-service (DoS) issues that can be triggered via DNS or DHCP. ...

In today's rapidly evolving threat landscape, safeguarding your organization against cyberattacks is more critical than ever. Traditional penetration testing (pentesting), while effective, often falls short due to its high costs, resource requirements, and infrequent implementation. Automated internal and external network pentesting is a game-changing solution, empowering organizations to stay ahead of attackers with cost-effective, frequent, and thorough security assessments. Strengthen Your Defenses: The Role of Internal and External Pentests  Effective cybersecurity requires addressing threats from both inside and outside your organization. Automated solutions streamline this process, enabling IT teams to implement a holistic and proactive defense strategy. Internal Pentesting: Securing the Core Internal pentesting simulates an attacker operating within your network, exposing vulnerabilities such as insider threats, compromised credentials, or breaches through physical or ...

After Equifax massive data breach that was believed to be caused due to a vulnerability in Apache Struts , Cisco has initiated an investigation into its products that incorporate a version of the popular Apache Struts2 web application framework. Apache Struts is a free, open-source MVC framework for developing web applications in the Java programming language, and used by 65 percent of the Fortune 100 companies, including Lockheed Martin, Vodafone, Virgin Atlantic, and the IRS. However, the popular open-source software package was recently found affected by multiple vulnerabilities, including two remote code execution vulnerabilities—one discovered earlier this month, and another in March—one of which is believed to be used to breach personal data of over 143 million Equifax users . Some of Cisco products including its Digital Media Manager, MXE 3500 Series Media Experience Engines, Network Performance Analysis, Hosted Collaboration Solution for Contact Center, and Unified C...

Updated: Since the below-reported vulnerability is highly critical and it would take a few weeks for sysadmins to protect their enterprise network, the research team has not yet disclosed the technical details of the vulnerability. Meanwhile, I have talked with Maksim Malyutin, a member of Embedi research team who discovered the vulnerability in March, and updated my article based on the information provided by him. A critical vulnerability has been discovered in the remote management features on computers shipped with Intel processors for past seven years (and not decade), which could allow attackers to take control of the computers remotely, affecting all Intel systems, including PC, laptops, and servers, with AMT feature enabled. As reported earlier, this critical flaw (CVE-2017-5689) is not a remote code execution, rather Malyutin confirmed to The Hacker News that it's a logical vulnerability that also gives remote attackers an opportunity to exploit this bug using add...

Over a month ago we reported about two critical zero-day vulnerabilities in the world's 2nd most popular database management software MySQL: MySQL Remote Root Code Execution (CVE-2016-6662) Privilege Escalation (CVE-2016-6663) At that time, Polish security researcher Dawid Golunski of Legal Hackers who discovered these vulnerabilities published technical details and proof-of-concept exploit code for the first bug only and promised to release details of the second bug (CVE-2016-6663) later. On Tuesday, Golunski has released proof-of-concept (POC) exploits for two vulnerabilities: One is the previously promised critical privilege escalation vulnerability ( CVE-2016-6663 ), and another is a new root privilege escalation bug ( CVE-2016-6664 ) that could allow an attacker to take full control over the database. Both the vulnerabilities affect MySQL version 5.5.51 and earlier, MySQL version 5.6.32 and earlier, and MySQL version 5.7.14 and earlier, as well as MySQL forks...

Microsoft has rolled out six security updates this Patch Tuesday , out of which three are considered to be " critical, " while the rest are marked as " important. " Bulletin MS15-106 is considered to be critical for Internet Explorer (IE) and affects absolutely all versions of Windows operating system. The update addresses a flaw in the way IE handles objects in memory. The flaw could be exploited to gain access to an affected system, allowing hackers to gain the same access rights as the logged-in user. A hacker could " take advantage of compromised websites, and websites that accept or host user-provided content or advertisements ," the advisory states. " These websites could contain specially crafted content that could exploit the vulnerabilities. " Therefore, the dependency here is that an IE user must knowingly click on the malicious link, which then be leveraged by an attacker to get the full control over a computer t...

Ever registered on StarBucks website? Change your passwords now! If you are one of those Millions Starbucks customers who have registered their accounts and credit card details on StarBucks website, then your banking details are vulnerable to hackers. An Independent Security Researcher, Mohamed M. Fouad from Egypt, has found three critical vulnerabilities on StarBucks website that could have allowed attackers to take over your account in just one click. The vulnerabilities include: Remote Code Execution Remote File Inclusion lead to Phishing Attacks CSRF (Cross Site Request Forgery) Stealing Credit Cards Details In case of Remote File Inclusion flaw, an attacker can inject a file from any location into the target page, which includes as a source code for parsing and execution, allowing attacker to perform: Remote Code Execution on the company's web server Remote Code Execution on the client-side, potentially allowing attacker to perform othe...

Zimperium Mobile Security Labs (zLabs) have been working hard to make Android operating system more safe and secure to use. Zimperium team has publicly released the CVE-2015-1538 Stagefright Exploit , demonstrating the process of Remote Code Execution (RCE) by an attacker. The released exploit is a python code creating an MP4 exploiting the 'stsc' vulnerability dubbed Stagefright. The purpose behind the release is to put penetration testers and security researchers to test and check the vulnerability of the code and analyze the results. Considered as the most critical flaw among all the existing vulnerabilities; the Stagefright flaw is capable of revealing user's information remotely by injecting malicious code, even without any involvements of the user. Two months ago, Zimperium Labs uncovered multiple vulnerabilities in 'libstagefright,' a service attached with the software-based codecs natively in Android smartphones for media playback. The vulnera...

With the release of 12 Security Bulletins , Microsoft addresses a total of 56 vulnerabilities in its different products. The bulletins include five critical updates, out of which two address vulnerabilities in all versions of Windows. The September Patch Tuesday update (released on second Tuesday of each month) makes a total of 105 Security Bulletins being released this year; which is more than the previous year with still three months remaining for the current year to end. The reason for the increase in the total number of security bulletins within such less time might be because of Windows 10 release and its installation reaching to a score of 100 million. Starting from MS15-094 to   MS15-105 ( 12 security bulletins ) Microsoft rates the severity of the vulnerabilities and their impact on the affected software. Bulletins MS15-094 and MS15-095 are the cumulative updates, meaning these are product-specific fixes for security related vulnerabilities that are r...

What if you get 1 Million Frequent Flyer Miles for Free? Yes, 1 Million Air Miles… …I think that would be enough for several first-class trips to Europe or up to 20 round-trips in the United States. Two Computer Hackers have earned more than 1 Million frequent-flyer miles each from United Airlines for finding multiple security vulnerabilities in the Airline's website. Back in May this year, Chicago-based ' United Airlines ' launched a bug bounty program and invited security researchers and bug hunters to find and report security vulnerabilities in its websites, software, apps and web portals. Jordan Wiens , a security researcher from Florida and one of two bounty winners, tweeted last week that he earned United Airlines' top reward of 1 Million Miles for finding a flaw that could have allowed a hacker to seize control of one of the airline's websites. Wiens is not allowed to disclose the technical details regarding the vulnerabilities, but ...

Apple has released updates to patch dozens of security vulnerabilities in iOS and OS X Yosemite operating system. The updates include iOS 8.4 version of the mobile operating system, OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 and Security Update 2015-005. iOS 8.4 Update The iOS 8.4  update includes patches for over 20 security vulnerabilities that could lead to remote code execution (RCE) , application termination, the intercepted encrypted traffic, man-in-the-middle attacks and other problem. Certificate trust policy issues, buffer overflow vulnerabilities, apache compatibility issues, memory corruption flaws, and a host of WebKit, kernel, and CoreText vulnerabilities were also patched in the latest iOS update. OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 update The OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 update includes patches for QuickTime, ImageIO, and OpenSSL along with Remote Code Execution (RCE) flaws and other issues that may allow attackers to gain elevated privileges or crash applications. The Safar...

A controversial piece of security and maintenance software for Mac OS X computers, known as MacKeeper, has been found to be vulnerable to a critical remote code execution vulnerability. MacKeeper antivirus software for Mac OS X is designed to improve Mac performance and security, but it is infamous for its noisy "clean up your Mac" pop-under ads that stress the need for a system cleanup. If you try to close the ad, the software will prompt you to " Leave Page/Stay on This Page " dialogues. The vulnerability details were disclosed on Friday after the patch release, which allows an attacker to execute remotely malicious commands with root privileges on Mac OS X systems when a victim visits specially crafted Web pages. MacKeeper Versions Earlier to 3.4.1 are Affected The remote code execution flaw, affecting the versions earlier to 3.4.1, caused due to the way MacKeeper malware removal software handles its custom URLs, security researchers at Secure...

A critical remote code execution vulnerability has been reported in the eBay owned global e-commerce business PayPal that could be exploited by an attacker to execute arbitrary code on the PayPal's Marketing online-service web-application server. The remote code execution flaw, discovered by an independent security researcher, Milan A Solanki , has been rated Critical by Vulnerability Lab with a CVSS count of 9.3 and affected the marketing online service web-application of PayPal. The vulnerability resides in the Java Debug Wire Protocol (JDWP) protocol of the PayPal's marketing online service web-server. Successful exploitation of the PayPal vulnerability could result in an unauthorized execution of system specific codes against the targeted system in order to completely compromise the company's web server, without any privilege or user interaction. JDWP is a protocol that used for communication between a debugger and the Java virtual machine that i...

The most popular e-commerce platform owned by eBay, Magento is once again in the news. This time for a critical Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability , affecting hundreds of thousands of online merchants worldwide. If exploited, the critical vulnerability could allow a hacker to compromise completely any online store powered by Magento and gain access to credit card details and other financial as well as personal information related to the customers. Which isn't great? This serious flaw in Magento platform  exploits a series of vulnerabilities that ultimately allow unauthenticated attackers to execute any PHP code of their choice on the web server. All the vulnerabilities that lead to remote code execution (RCE) flaw are present in the Magento core code, and affect the default installation of both Magento Community and Magento Enterprise Editions. Running arbitrary code on the web server gives attackers the ability to bypass all security mechanisms and ...

Hackers have sold secrets of zero-day exploits in the underground Dark Web marketplace such as the Silk Road and its various successors for years, and now a new deep web marketplace has appeared that offers anonymity protection to its sellers. A new Dark Web market , called " TheRealDeal ," has opened up for hackers, which focuses on selling Zero-Day exploits — infiltration codes that took advantage of software vulnerabilities for which the manufacturers have released no official software patch. Yes, THE REAL DEE……..EAL TheRealDeal Market, actually emerged over the last month, makes use of Tor anonymity software and the digital currency Bitcoin in an attempt to hide the identities of its buyers, sellers, and of course its own administrators. TOR , a.k.a The Onion Router , is one of the most well-known Darknets, where it is harder to trace the identity of a user, as it doesn't share your identifying information such as your IP address and physical loc...

About two weeks back, over 40,000 organizations running MongoDB were found unprotected and vulnerable to hackers. Now, once again the users of MongoDB database are at risk because of a critical zero-day vulnerability making rounds in underground market. MongoDB , one of the leading NoSQL databases, is an open-source database used by companies of all sizes, across all industries for a wide variety of applications. By leveraging in-memory computing, MongoDB provides high performance for both reads and writes. 'PhPMoAdmin' ZERO-DAY VULNERABILITY Hacker known by the online moniker, "sp1nlock" has found a zero-day vulnerability in ' phpMoAdmin ', a free, open-source, written in PHP, AJAX-based MongoDB GUI (graphical user interface) administration tool that allows you to easily manage noSQL database MongoDB. According to multiple posts available on the exploit selling underground forums, the phpMoAdmin is vulnerable to a Zero-Day Remote Code Exec...

A critical vulnerability has been fixed in Samba — Open Source standard Windows interoperability suite of programs for Linux and Unix, that could have allowed hackers to remotely execute an arbitrary code in the Samba daemon ( smbd ). Samba is an open source implementation of the SMB/CIFS network file sharing protocol that works on the majority of operating systems available today, which allows a non-Windows server to communicate with the same networking protocol as the Windows products. Samba is supported by many operating systems including Windows 95/98/NT, OS/2, and Linux. smbd is the server daemon of Samba which provides file sharing and printing services to clients using the SMB/CIFS protocol. Samba is also sometimes installed as a component of *BSD and OS X systems. The vulnerability, designated as CVE-2015-0240 , actually resides in this smbd file server daemon. The bug can be exploited by hackers to potentially execute code remotely with root privileges, the ...

A highly critical vulnerability has been unearthed in the GNU C Library (glibc) , a widely used component of most Linux distributions, that could allow attackers to execute malicious code on servers and remotely gain control of Linux machines. The vulnerability, dubbed " GHOST " and assigned CVE-2015-0235 , was discovered and disclosed by the security researchers from Redwood Shores, California-based security firm Qualys on Tuesday. CRITICAL AS HEARTBLEED AND SHELLSHOCK GHOST is considered to be critical because hackers could exploit it to silently gain complete control of a targeted Linux system without having any prior knowledge of system credentials (i.e. administrative passwords). Also Read:  Top Best Password Managers . The flaw represents an immense Internet threat, in some ways similar to the Heartbleed ,   Shellshock   and Poodle   bugs that came to light last year. WHY GHOST ? The vulnerability in the GNU C Library (glibc) is dubbe...